Is Donald Trump the laziest President?1:33

It has been revealed the Donald Trump spends 60% of his day in "Executive Time" and the media are suspicious. What is he doing? Does he just watch television and tweet or is he actually doing work? We compare his working days with some past Presidents.

February 12th 2019

10 days ago

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The President has warned he is ‘not happy’ with the deal, but is expected to sign it before the deadline at midnight on Friday. Picture: Mandel Ngan / AFPSource:AFP

Donald Trump is poised to sign off on legislation to fund the United States government and avoid another shutdown — but his anger over the deal is likely to see him take extreme measures to build his wall.

Mr Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday he had not yet seen the bill and would be “looking for landmines”, but added: “I don’t want to see a shutdown. A shutdown would be a terrible thing.”

The five-week shutdown that left 800,000 federal workers without pay and saw the closure of important services sent his approval ratings tumbling, and the President may be forced to accept a bill he does not support to avoid it.

CBS News’ chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett said Mr Trump had been offered the “worst deal of all the ones ever put before him”, since it only includes $US1.375 billion ($A1.9 billion) for border security funding.

And what comes next remains a huge question mark, with a senior GOP aide telling the network: “It’s not like there’s a Plan B right now.”

The draft text is set to be published this afternoon local time, and Congress will vote on it tomorrow. The President has until midnight on Friday to sign the deal and keep the government open.

The White House said Mr Trump was looking at his options for funding the border wall, which could include declaring a national emergency or taking executive action to divert funds from elsewhere in government.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters at the White House on Wednesday it was hard to say “hard to say definitively whether or not the President is going to sign” until he had seen the final text of the legislation.

“The President isn’t fully happy, as he said yesterday, with everything that’s in the legislation but there are some positive pieces of it,” she said. “At the end of the day, the President is going to build the wall.”

She told Fox News Mr Trump had “alternative options” to build the wall and was “going keep those on the table.” These could include accessing Treasury, military construction or Army Corps civil works funds.

Democrats have vowed to take legal action if he attempts to declare a national emergency to find the money he wants, promising more chaos within the divided US administration.

Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters the President was “very inclined” to declare a national emergency.

“I don’t think you’re going to see a shutdown,” Mr Trump said at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “If you did have it, it’s the Democrats’ fault. And I accepted the first one, and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished because people learned during that shutdown all about the problems coming in from the southern border.

He said he was “not happy” about the deal, which was “not enough”, saying he would add “things to it”, although he did say what these things would be.

I want to thank all Republicans for the work you have done in dealing with the Radical Left on Border Security. Not an easy task, but the Wall is being built and will be a great achievement and contributor toward life and safety within our Country!

“I can’t say I’m happy. I can’t say I’m thrilled,” he told reporters. “I can tell you that, am I happy, at first glance? I just got to see it. The answer is no, I’m not. I’m not happy.”

The President said he would still be able to build his wall by “supplementing things and moving things around”, using money from “far less important areas.”

On Tuesday evening, he thanked congressional Republicans on Twitter “for the work you have done in dealing with the Radical Left on Border Security” and drafting the agreement.

The President has been ramping up his rhetoric about the apparent crisis at the border in recent days, claiming the US faces an “invasion” of criminal illegal immigrants.

At a rally in the border town of El Paso on Monday night, Mr Trump told the crowd: “We’re building the wall anyway.

“The wall’s being built, it will continue, it’s going at a rapid pace.”

The proposed deal provides funds for an average detention population of 45,274, including 2500 family beds. It also includes a further $US750 million ($A1 billion) for 13,000 additional beds if US Immigration and Customs Enforcement needs to respond to a surge in illegal immigration or arrests.

That would bring the total number of beds to almost 58,500 — an 18 per cent increase on the current detention population of 49,057.

The deal does not include a strict new cap Democrats had sought on immigrants detained within the US, as opposed to just at the border.